1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing control device, a printing control method, and a computer-readable storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there have been developed image forming apparatuses provided with a clear toner, which is a colorless toner including no color material in addition to four color toners of CMYK. A toner image formed with such a clear toner is fixed on a recording medium, such as a transfer sheet, on which an image is formed with CMYK toners. As a result, a visual effect and a tactile effect (referred to as a surface effect) are produced on the surface of the recording medium. The surface effect to be produced differs depending on the type of the toner image formed with the clear toner and the way to fix the toner image. Some surface effects simply provide gloss, whereas some surface effects suppress gloss. Other examples of the surface effects may include: a surface effect applied not to the entire surface but to a part thereof; a surface effect that forms a texture and a watermark with a clear toner; a surface effect that provides surface protection; and a surface effect produced by a dedicated post-processing device, such as a glosser and a low-temperature fixing device, performing post-processing besides by fixing control. Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2009-058941, for example, discloses an image forming apparatus that can change forming conditions for forming a latent image of a transparent toner image.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2010-152129, for example, discloses an image forming apparatus that performs control such that the frequency of fixing processing related to an electrophotography process differs for a divided image divided into a plurality of parts in units in which the level of gloss is to be changed.
If a print request is received in which a plurality of surface effects to be produced by a plurality of types of post-processing are present in a single page and if the post-processing device cannot perform the types of post-processing simultaneously in the single page, the conventional image forming apparatus cannot control the post-processing device so as to produce the surface effects properly.
Therefore, there is a need to provide a printing control device, a printing control method, and a computer-readable storage medium that can accept a print request including a plurality of surface effects to be produced by a plurality of types of post-processing incapable of being performed simultaneously by a post-processing device in a single page and control the post-processing device so as to produce the surface effects properly.